Homeworker Club Review

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I’ll get immediately to the point with this one: Not everyone is cut out for being a home worker.

During the approximately 15 years I have been working for myself, I’ve spoken to countless people about self-employment, freelancing and being a home worker.

Reactions are hugely varied. Some people immediately say they’d never take the home working route and would never want to, some people have no interest whatsoever(!) and, at the other end of the scale, you have people who are hugely curious and inquisitive. This is sometimes to the point of asking for specific advice on how they could get started with it themselves. Presumably, if you’re reading this, you’re in the latter category?

All of those questions contributed to why I founded HomeWorkingClub.com. (Along with the fact that self-employment is booming globally, and about to overtake the entire public sector in the UK, according to figures in The Telegraph).

Here, we aim to help everyone who truly wants a career as a home worker to get that career off the ground.

But here’s the thing:

The percentage of people I’ve given detailed advice to in the past who’ve gone on to do anything remotely useful with it is depressingly small.

The fact is that establishing yourself as a successful freelance home worker, in any sector, is hard work. In terms of anything resembling instant gratification, it doesn’t come close to a job, even one where you have to wait a month for the first pay-check.

In most freelance endeavours, you’ll still be setting things up and paying your dues when your employed counterparts see their first salary payment hit the bank. The real rewards come much later.

I’ve always had the above firmly in mind throughout the process of setting up HomeWorkingClub.com. I decided before I wrote anything for the site that I wouldn’t hold back on home truths and honesty.

Honesty is something sadly lacking throughout much of the home worker / make money online industry. Everyone’s so busy trying to tell you how easy things can be and how much money can be made that they don’t take the time to tell it how it really is. This is what we aim to do differently here, even if it may sometimes come across as slightly bossy and cynical!

I LOVE being a home worker. My wife adores it too, even though she was forced into it by a redundancy and thought she would hate it. We get to work in PJs, in bed, on the sofa or on a hotel balcony; We can enjoy unexpected warm days in the garden instead of looking at them out of an office window; We can take Christmas off every year instead of when it’s our turn; And we can ramp up our work if we want to bring in some extra cash for something special.

These are all fantastic things, but they don’t come without hard work and sacrifice. I mean nights of sitting up until 3am getting projects finished, doing assignments for chump change to build up good online reputations, selling our souls here and there on projects we detest but need the money for, and putting up with ongoing uncertainty and cycles of feast and famine, which will always be part of a freelance life.

Not everyone is cut out for this type of existence – and that’s OK! Nobody said everybody should be the same. But the purpose of this article is to find out whether YOU are suited to being a self-employed home worker.

The following questions may be tough to answer. They’re supposed to be. There’s also absolutely no point in bending the truth with your answers. If you can’t answer “yes” to the majority of these questions, your chances of freelance success are slim. Now how’s that for honest?

1. Are you willing to pay your dues with low-paid work?

Whether you’re planning to set up shop as a freelancer on a site like UpWork or start selling on eBay, you’re going to have to start at the bottom.

With freelance platforms like UpWork, that means accepting jobs at super-low rates to build up your star-rating and reputation. With eBay selling it means letting some items go for below market value until your feedback is good enough for people to trust you.

In both of these cases (and plenty of others), this means ploughing hours into something for next to no reward, and certainly a level of reward that’s often far below a living wage in the western world.

For experienced people, this makes perfect sense. Often businesses take months or years to make money. However, I’ve personally spent hours explaining to people how to get established on platforms like UpWork, and been extremely clear on this part of it all, only to see them walk away grumpy and dejected long before getting their first assignment.

If you’re not willing to put some work in to learn and to establish yourself, go and get a job in a bar with a guaranteed wage. Freelancing is NOT for you.

2. Are you prepared to go where the money is?

Home working is something that gets easier as you get more established, but in the early stages you won’t get that much choice in what you do.

The example that always springs to mind from when I was getting started as a freelance writer was when I spent two days researching pallets and waste management, in order to write 10,000 words of related website content. That’s basically a dissertation on wooden pallets.

I don’t think I earned very much from it and hated every minute, but I put my head down, got the money and got the five-star feedback.

But my favourite example of “going where the money is” is something my wife and I did about six or seven years ago.

We both used to do very basic product description writing for a now-defunct Facebook-based freelance platform called CloudCrowd. About a month before Christmas they had a huge rush-job on and were begging for more workers to help over a specific weekend. My wife and I reached out to everyone we could remember who’d said “ooh, let me know if you ever get any extra work I could do?”

We thought people would bite our hands off, especially with it being just before Christmas. In fact, as far as I’m aware just one of our associates managed to do a few descriptions and earn a token amount.

I’m aware this probably comes across as “ooh, check US out!” but I have a really important point to make here: Any one of our friends could have made that money that weekend – or just set aside half a day and made a proportion of it. But they didn’t.

The point is that there’s oodles of money to be made in the online world, but the people making the lion’s share of it are the people willing to put in the graft. Yep, it’s just like the real world.

3. Are you comfortable with uncertainty as a home worker?

I know several highly skilled professional people who could at least double their income if they switched from their payrolled jobs to freelance consultancy. They could wave the office goodbye and swap commuting for a home worker life. They have absolutely no desire to do so.

The reason for this is the inherent uncertainty that comes with home working and freelancing – and it’s completely impossible to deny that it’s a very valid factor.

I could cite so many examples of uncertainty that self-employment has brought me. A couple of years after setting up in IT consultancy, I finally started to feel successful, only to abruptly lose my biggest client. This was not due to any problem, but because their own success had resulted in a buy-out by a bigger company with its own IT department.

The Christmas when I was owed a five-figure sum in outstanding invoices and didn’t know if I’d be able to buy food or presents until a couple were finally paid on Christmas Eve was another highlight too.

I’d be the first person to agree that uncertainty is part and parcel of freelancing life.

That said, in reality uncertainty is part of being employed too. Anyone could lose an old-school job at any time, with anything from a week to three months’ of notice. There is an argument that a home worker with several different streams of income is actually subject to less risk of a monumental life change than someone with just one job. That’s the argument that keeps me (just about) sane.

4. Are your computer skills up to scratch?

As I’ve discussed in a previous post on computer fundamentals for home working, computer skills are all but essential for modern home workers.

Obviously, you need to know far more as an Internet marketer (for example), than someone making crafts and listing them on Etsy or eBay. But the basics of file and folder management, image manipulation and keeping backups of data are still real essentials.

I won’t reiterate everything mentioned in the previous post here, but it does bear repeating that inadequate computer skills will, at best, drastically slow you down and reduce your home working earning potential.

5. Can you prioritise and manage your time?

If you’re prone to procrastination or easily distracted by the TV, you may well struggle as a home worker.

I’m perhaps lucky in that I enjoy the buzz of having a lot to do far more than I enjoy vegetating on the sofa. In fact, in the early days of a project like HomeWorkingClub, my bigger problem is that I tend not to sleep, eat, exercise or bathe!

But this is a serious question. When it comes to freelancing you get out what you put in, and thanks to a global army of freelancers competing for work, someone else will do the work you don’t get around to. If you don’t think you can motivate yourself, you may be better off with a traditional job, where you can be motivated by the fact that you’ll eventually get fired if you don’t turn up.

6. Can you handle rejection?

Rejection is part and parcel of working freelance.

I remember reading something once that said people applying for freelance gigs on UpWork go for an average of forty positions before landing the first one. That’s a whole bunch of rejection.

It’s the same in all kinds of home worker roles. eBay items that take an age to list and then go for 99p; Blog posts that nobody reads; And, worst of all, incredible pitches that don’t even get an acknowledgement.

It does get easier to deal with this, and really bad examples of rejection get less frequent with experience, but plenty of people bottle out before they turn that corner.

This, however, is good news for those who stay the distance. I know people who can land as many as one in three of their UpWork pitches now. That basically turns a hugely competitive marketplace into a tap of new projects that can be turned on at any time.

7. Are you professional?

If you are consistent and highly professional as a freelancer, nobody really cares if you’re working in your PJs (people assume we all do it anyway!)

But it IS important that you are professional, whether you’re selling on eBay or selling consultancy services for a thousand a day.

I’ve been personally involved in hiring and managing freelancers for plenty of clients and projects. Here are just some of the things I’ve seen:

People sending a fantastic pitch for a role (a pitch that will have taken them ages to produce), only to fail to respond to any further communications.

Individuals negotiating great rates and then disappearing completely.

Freelancers continually turning in work late. (I’ll admit I’ve been known to sometimes keep on freelancers like this and work around their tardiness, but you can be sure they’re last in the queue for any raises or exciting new projects).

This “are you professional?” question is going to be the hardest one to answer honestly because nobody wants to admit to themselves that they’re not.

However, it’s utterly pointless for anyone to lie to themselves about this, because every day their shortcomings are shown up by all the people out there who are professional. These are the ones making the money, and the ones far further along the path to a lucrative home working career.

How do you feel about the items on this list? Do you honestly feel you could tick them all off? Share your thoughts in the comments!

What the Code is About Companies Who have signed the Homeworkers' Code of PracticeRetailers, manufacturers, fashion houses and labels who have not signed the Homeworkers Code Of Practice Co's targetted for letters to sign code

What the Code is about

The homeworkers' code of practice has been developed by the TCFUA

together with representatives of the retail and manufacturing in the textile, clothing and footwear industries. The Code is a self regulatory system that intends to regulate and monitor the production chain from the retailer to the homeworker.

It also attempts to simplify the reporting requirements of manufacturers building solidly on award entitlements to workers.

There are two parts of the code.

Part one is the part relevant to retailers, "The Statement of Principles Regarding Homeworkers Wages and Conditions".

This includes:

Ten principles that outline the parties to the agreement intent.

The acceptable work conditions and pay rates homeworkers should receive.

That parties to the agreement will promote that manufacturers must comply with these standards.

Retailers who purchase products not produced by exploited labour may use or identify these products with a logo or other sign of compliance.

Retailers committ not to sell products which have been produced by exploited labour, this may include terminating a relationship with a supplier.

The Code will lead to garments carrying a sign that they are manufactured ethically and that shops will carry a logo if they stock such clothing. Retailers may promote the fact that they only deal with accredited manufacturers who do not exploit homeworkers.

Part Two The Code of Practice: This part sets out the criteria for participating manufacturers.

There is a Code of Practice Committee which will oversee the setting up and ongoing management of the Code.

It involves an accreditation procedure whereby manufacturers who give work to contractors or directly to homeworkers seek accreditation.

The accreditation process will ensure that from the retailer down to the homeworker the chain is transparent.

This will be achieved by the following steps:

Retailer signatory to the Principles will provide to the union lists of their suppliers

Retailer will require their suppliers in their purchase contracts, to comply with all laws and regulations including payment of the sewing garment rate relevant to homeworkers.

Manufacturers or suppliers to retailers will seek accreditation

Accredited suppliers will provide documentation to Code Committee verifying that the subcontractors they use are keeping all appropriate documentation and paying their homeworkers according to the agreed garment sewing time manual standard. Pay rates for homeworkers

The introduction of a timing manual where garments will be classified into three levels of complexity and become the standard for fixing sewing time rates translated into pay rates for homeworkers.

The minute sewing time per garment provided to the homeworker to sew will be adjusted with percentages for annual leave and public holidays. The homeworker must receive with each batch of work paperwork which identifies that the homeworker is being paid correctly according to the standard.

The code also specifies the minimum garments (total amount of work) per week a homeworker can receive from a contractor over a two week period as well as the maximum work load they can receive over a two week period.

Manufacturers will risk loosing accreditation and contracts with retailers if their contractors fail to pay homeworkers correctly.

Code of Practice Committee:

The committee will undertake an education and information program to educate and inform Manufacturers , Homeworkers and Consumers about the code.

Companies Who have signed the Homeworkers' Code of Practice

LIST OF COMPANIES WHO HAVE AGREED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE LABOUR BEHIND THEIR LABELS

Retailers who signed a ‘Deed of Co-operation" with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia in 1995/96

Australia Post

Ken Done & Associates Pty Ltd

Country Road Pty Ltd Target Australia

Retailers who have signed the Homeworkers Code of Practice

Best and Less

Big W

Brown Sugar

Coles Supermarket

Daimaru

David Jones

Dotti

Events

Fashion Fair

Fosseys

Gowings

Jacqui E

Jag

Just Jeans Pty Ltd

Katies

Kmart

Lowes Manhattan

Maggie T

Myer Grace Bros

Najee

Pelaco Pty Ltd

Portmans

Rockmans

Roger David

Saba

Sussan

Suzanne Grae

The Clothing Company

Westco Jeans

Witchery Fashions Pty Ltd

Woolworths

Manufacturers, Fashion Houses and Wholesalers who have signed the Homeworkers Code of Practice

Adidas

Anthea Crawford*

AFG Kidswear

Australian Defence Apparel

Autumn

Brian Rochford*

Carla Zampatti P/L*

Casco Blue Pty Ltd

Clothes Scene Pty Ltd

Conarge

Consolidated Apparel P/L*

Cue*

C.T.M. Clothing

Dara Star Fashions*

Depict Distributors

Depict Knits

Dewspot

Diamond Cut*

Dimension Clothing

G A Fashions*

Gazal

General Pants*

Hadfom P/L*

Hallmark Mitex

Hot Clothing Co. P/L*

Hot Gossip*

Hot Tuna Pty Ltd

Hound Dog Australia P/L

House of David

House of Stitches

Ivorie Australia

K Mart

Kenwall Clothing Co. P/L*

King Gee Clothing Co.

Konange Pty Ltd

L A Shirts*

Lisa T Shirts*

Mont Adventure Equip’t*

My Garment Co. P/L*

Jasprop/Autumn

Neater Fashions

Davenport

Taking Shape

Neat N' Trim

Pacific Brands

Berlei

Bonds Industries

Candy Footwear

Holeproof

Jockey/Red Robin

Park Lane Fashions

Peter Weiss Pty Ltd

Paddymade*

Ranier P/L*

Resort Report*

Physico*

Rumours

Scuttle

Review*

Simona

Sara Lee Intimates

Sheridan*

Sportsgirl/Sportscraft*

S F Corporate Clothing*

Sport Fashion Group

Stafford Group

Sportsknit P/L

S&R Fashions

Tajura Fashions*

Sunny Textile Industries

Table Eight*

Trent Nathan P/L*

Time Sportswear

Trackmaster

Turning Point

Yaramovsky Pty Ltd

*indicates signed the Retailer section of Code also

Industry Associations who have signed the Homeworkers Code of Practice

ARA - Australian Retailers Association (specific section within the Code for ARA members)

TFIA - Textile Footwear Industry Association

ABC - Australian Business Chamber

ACM - Australian Chamber of Manufactures

Retailers, manufacturers, fashion houses and labels who have not signed the Homeworkers Code Of Practice